>Andreas Freiherr wrote:
> It wasn't a full implementation of the standard. That's why we didn't
> officially call it GKS, but GUGS, a German abbreviation for
> device-independant graphical system. But it was sufficient to do
> assorted tasks from mechanical engineering, from basic line and point
> diagrams using GPL and GPM through a 3D frame drawing of machine part
> derived from a CNC program, at the university of Darmstadt. However, the
> stuff was developed in a commercial project, so we probably would have
> needed a hard-to-get permission to offer the code to the DECUS library.
> At times, I was paid from this project.
Jerome Fine replies:
The same with some code I intend to port to V5.03 of RT-11.
> OTOH, I am certain that there is no commercial interest in this material
> any more, and I definitely plan on digging out the old save set and
> continue development. The bad news is that this is another project on a
> long list, so maybe I need somebody to more efficiently manage my time...
Likewise. I seem to be spending more time working out the details.
Also, no one else seems to care about it in any case.
> I do keep a Tektronix 411x (the one with the larger screen - long time
> since...) terminal at home, together with a tablet, and hope to add some
> input capabilities to the library at some later time.
>
> Once I got the task to estimate the amount of work needed to support a
> given terminal (for output only). I was supposed to spend about one hour
> on looking at the manual, but I came back after about one and a half
> hour with a working driver for the device.
>
> We even had a shell around GUGS that would have a call interface similar
> to an older library with Benson- and Calcomp-based routines. This way,
> old plot programs could be adapted to more modern devices by interfacing
> them to GUGS in the shell instead of re-inventing the application.
>
> The basic kludge with the overlay tree, developed on RSX, was to create
> a separate tree for the library: this made it easy to propose a
> framework .ODL file that could be readily applied to any user program,
> and then optimized for either space or speed.
Any possibility that it can also be used under RT-11?
> > I used a VAX/VMS system in the early 1990s and discovered all
> > of the wonderful enhancements. Ever since I have attempted to
> > figure out how to port some of them back down to RT-11. One
> > such as the Logical Name List capability is close to completion
> > as a Path Handler in RT-11. Also similar to the PATH NAME
> > is DOS.
> Backporting? - Oh yes, part of my diploma work was a
> reduced-functionality SMG$ (VMS' Screen ManaGement routines) library for
> RSX, written in MACRO-11. I use it at home for EVA, the "Electronic
> Video Archive" (my private video collection is managed on a PDP-11).
There are probably many such examples. TPU/EVE (I think that is correct
as it applies to the VAX screen editor) would be great to have under RT-11.
Plus other features as well. The Logical Name List in VMS seems to be
implemented right into the operating system. I hope to do the same under
RT-11 with the device name PHn: which the user can define as a search
list of up to 16 devices.
Is anyone on this list interested in:
(a) Participating in the design detail (other than Megan Gentry)?
(b) Using the features after they are made available other than the
few who have already expressed an interest?
Thus far, there really has be less than encouragement. Note that my
expression of the situation is a complaint, just an observation. Plus
I have been saying it for so my years, it is really time to actually
do it.
Sincerely yours,
Jerome Fine
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Received on Mon Jan 27 2003 - 15:50:00 GMT